Usually, if an envelope arrives in the mail from an insurance company, it contains one of two things. It is either “junk mail”, trying to sell you a policy, or, it is a bill that you are expected to pay. For us, it was none of the above. The envelopes actually contained checks, made out to my husband.
Recently, my husband and I purchased health insurance. It came with dental insurance. After doing some investigation, we realized that the policy we purchased didn’t actually cover much of anything at all. We also realized that it was more expensive than we could afford.
So, instead of holding onto a policy that we would be struggling to pay for, (while paying out of pocket for most of our health care needs), we canceled it. The really lucky thing was that we were able to figure out the problems with the policy, and call the insurer to cancel it, in the timespan between when we received the booklets that described the policy, and the date when it would take effect.
Our efficiency at doing this seemed to take the phone rep by surprise. He noted that our health insurance policy (both the regular part, and the dental), had not even started yet. He typed something into his computer, that noted that we decided to cancel the policy.
The next step was for us to send something to the insurer, by fax, that stated that we wanted to cancel our health insurance policy. They have to have this in writing before they can go ahead and cancel someone’s policy. We faxed them a letter, clearly stating our intentions, right away.
Now, at the time, the phone rep told us that we would not be charged for the insurance policy that we canceled before it officially “kicked in”. He said he made a note in his system about it, and that we would be getting a refund check in the mail.
However, that is not what happened. To make a long story short, the insurer started calling us, and leaving messages, saying to call them back. When I finally got in touch with a phone rep, he pulled up our information on his computer. Then, he said that it showed that had made an automatic payment. No, we certainly did not! I turned out that the insurer charged us for the policy we canceled, even though we were told that would not happen!
Needless to say, I was angry about this! We called to cancel the policy on October 28, 2011. This was a Friday. We sent the fax stating that we wanted to cancel our policy on October 30, 2011, (which was a Sunday). I’m not sure exactly when the insurer charged us for the canceled policies, but, the phone rep said we had made an automatic payment when I spoke to him on November 2, 2011, (which was a Wednesday).
We were told that we should get the refund check, “soon”. Today, we got two envelopes in the mail from this insurer. One turned out to be a refund check for our health insurance policy, and the other one had a refund check for our dental insurance (which was part of the exact same policy). Today is November 10, 2011.
I’m not sure why the insurer, who charged us by “automatic payment” had to make us wait for paper checks to arrive in the mail before we would get our refund. I’m also very unhappy to be charged for a policy we cancelled, after being assured that would not happen. Things like this make me very glad that we canceled the health insurance policy we had with Anthem Blue Cross.
Image by Steve Johnson on Flickr